Bill’s 1% solution: The mayor's near-rent-freeze is producing reliance on other loopholes in the system

With a magician's finesse, Mayor de Blasio readies a second year of scant rent increases following two years of freezes for tenants with the fortune to hold one of the city's 900,000-plus rent-stabilized leases.

Look under de Blasio's cloak, and see that nothing comes without a price — perhaps a big one when the state's rent laws expire in June.

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The mayorally appointed Rent Guidelines Board voted Thursday to consider a raise between 0.75% and 2.75% for one-year leases up for renewal, pending a final vote in two months. That's more than tenants say they can stand, but far, far less than the 7% landlords say they need.

Soaring real-estate taxes, which de Blasio is counting on to round out his expansive $89 billion budget, are driving building owners' costs up, up and away. Their tax bills rose 6.3% last year, and nearly 8% the year before that.

Yet miracle of miracles, the Rent Guidelines Board's researchers find that despite rent freezes, despite rising property taxes and other costs, despite everything de Blasio has thrown at them, landlords of rent-stabilized buildings are making more money than they have in memory.

Among other maneuvers, they take advantage of rent-law loopholes that allow them to rapidly increase what tenants pay and raise rent by 20% each time an apartment becomes vacant. Some succeed in raising the on-the-books rent above $2,700, removing apartments from regulation entirely.

Each jump through a loophole is another chance to make up the money lost on the tenants in the rent-regulation force field.

Meanwhile, rents are rising faster on de Blasio's own vast housing construction program, tied as it is to federal aid pegged to steadily increasing area incomes.

Yet despite the fact that the rent regulation loopholes are essentially buying rent-regulated tenants a near-freeze, de Blasio wants to close them. Word is Gov. Cuomo may seek the same.

From the department of be-careful-what-you-wish-for: close the loopholes, block landlords from removing apartments from rent regulation, and you've just shut the pressure valve that makes a rent freeze or anything close to it possible.